***Update**
Sorry for the delay, I’m not sure if it’s obvious but I’ve been going back and, hopefully, improving things- there is a new Part 3, and I’ve been trying to make the character models more consistent. Thanks for your patience.

This guy was difficult- his face needs to be obscured, and I spent a long time trying to develop a helmet that looked suitably mysterious without much joy. The hood isn’t very sci-fi but adds a little fantasy texture, hopefully.

Technical spex. I wanted to sketch out a floor plan of the ship so I had a clear idea of where things were. While doing that, it occurred to me including it in the narrative would be a good way to start introducing the idea of the ‘constantly inline and communicating’ theme. And it would look nice. And Illustrator is fun.

One of the things that bugs me about Star Wars specifically is travel times are so vague. You seem to be able to get half way across the galaxy in as short a time as the story requires.

Anyway, the star ship under discussion here, the Rollstar, can travel at 0.35 megalights per day-conveniently translating into one light year per day- when flying through normal space. The jump gates referenced here allow transportation through hyperspace, which in this universe is instantaneous, like the jumps in the remake of BSG.

This drawing has been kicking around for weeks, welcome to my fourth attempt at colouring it effectively. I’m still not 100% happy with it but I’ve added some stronger light/ dark contrast which has given it a certain rough charm.

It was planned as being part of a three-frame composition, but the extra frames didn’t do very much in terms of moving the story forward at a brisk pace, so the extra space can be used for the message log dialog, hopefully reinforcing the concept the conversation is taking place via telecommunications, not face to face.